


from locked doors to buried beasts

by MagpieCrown



Series: dear fellow traveler (miragehound) [2]
Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Disability, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Other, ish; as in i care about canon a lot until i don't care about it at all, tragic backstory, worldbuilding is not as prominent in this one but coming in full swing afterwards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29633046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: “--iott. Elliott! Wake up, please wake up, please,please,oh gods, oh no…”The strangled voice rips Elliott out of his dream (a very pleasant one, by the way, there was a beach involved and cocktails and he had to mix exactly none of them because it wasleisure time),but he has no chance to complain about it before the distress registers, and the hands, clammy and cold and trembling, one jammed under his jaw and the other touching his face, his neck, his chest in panicked, urgent movements.“Hound?” he blurts out, a random jumble of sounds, a residue of a name he says so often that it is permanently on the edge of his throat. “S’wrong?”
Relationships: Bloodhound/Mirage | Elliott Witt
Series: dear fellow traveler (miragehound) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2177295
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36





	from locked doors to buried beasts

**Author's Note:**

> turns out i might have more things to say, who knew! 
> 
> this fic is set sometime after "for my prayer has always been love"; you don't have to have read it in order to understand this one, but a couple of minor references might fly over your head. if the gods will it, this second fic will end up being #1 of a 2/3-part-arc, but we will see xD

_ dear fellow traveler under the moon, _

_ I saw you standing in the shadows, _

_ and your eyes won’t move _

“--iott. Elliott! Wake up, please wake up, please,  _ please, _ oh gods, oh no…”

The strangled voice rips Elliott out of his dream (a very pleasant one, by the way, there was a beach involved and cocktails and he had to mix exactly none of them because it was  _ leisure time), _ but he has no chance to complain about it before the distress registers, and the hands, clammy and cold and trembling, one jammed under his jaw and the other touching his face, his neck, his chest in panicked, urgent movements.

“Hound?” he blurts out, a random jumble of sounds, a residue of a name he says so often that it is permanently on the edge of his throat. “S’wrong?”

The figure above him sighs in abrupt relief, the air punched out of their chest, and the sigh turns into a cough, and another, and another, each more violent than the last, awful hacking noises that rattle their frame. And then Bloodhound is twisting away from him and towards the bedside table, and there’s fumbling of plastic and silicone against the wood, and the pop of a regulator valve - all of it culminating in a shuddering inhale.

Elliott raises himself up on his elbows, still groggy, then sits fully up, sheets pooling around his waist. Alarm trickles slowly through his body, electrifying him awake, but in a belated, confused way of witnessing the accident scene after the worst of the damage has already been done.

Elliott lifts a hand, sifting through the wreckage. Pauses just short of touching Bloodhound’s quivering back, his fingertips dipping into the stretch of warmth that seeps through the thin fabric.

“Babe?” he tries. “You’re okay. It’s all okay.” They were saying something. Asking him something? “I’m okay too,” he ventures. “You need anythin’?”

Bloodhound is still coughing - though the worst of the fit seems to be over - and they throw up their free hand in a wordless request to wait.

Elliott leans back on his hands, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck as his brain slowly rumbles to life. Bloodhound isn’t the type to lie about something serious - if they needed immediate help, they would make it known. And Elliott  _ has _ seen them have nightmares before - something familiar to him, too - and though it only happened a couple of times so far, the best strat seems to be to just let them ride it out.

And so he stretches, and yawns so hard he tears up, and waits, his body uncooperative and heavy with interrupted sleep, begging him to just sink back into the sheets and forget about all of this.

Elliott is halfway through silently reciting the list of stuff he needs to order for the bar next week just to keep himself occupied when a sound slices clean through, something different enough to stand out against Bloodhound’s coughs and the quiet hissing of their respirator.

A sob.

Oh, oh damn. So this is worse than usual. Not that Elliott has a good grasp on what the ‘usual’ is yet (he suppresses a misplaced thrill at the idea of  _ learning, _ seriously, now is not the time), but - yeah - definitely worse.

“Babe?” He calls again, wincing when the spike of alarm bleeds into his voice: he is still too sleepy to modulate. He watches their shoulders hunch inwards as they curl their spine tighter, guarding themself closer. “Houndie? C’mere.”

For a moment, neither moves. Nighttime Solace City inks itself in through the blinds, throwing pastel spots of light against the walls, letting in the whispers of pressurized air under the sparse traffic.

Slowly, Bloodhound shifts around until they are facing Elliott. Their eyebrows are drawn above half-lidded eyes, and they won’t look at him, but Elliott doesn’t take it personally. He doesn’t know how they came to be functionally blind, but it’s not like he was about to push his luck and ask back when they were already so anxious about letting him see their face in the first place. 

(He remembers it well - it wasn’t long ago enough to fade around the edges in his memory, the way they stared past him with something painfully close to resignation in their expression, their skin of the muted pallor that a natural tan gets without any sunlight, the scattered freckles an almost starker contrast against it than the foggy grey of their eyes.) 

Maybe it has something to do with the webbing of scars cut into it like a too-tight harness. Maybe not.

Bloodhound is fidgeting with the small cylinder of the gas tank, fingers clenching and unclenching around the metal. Beneath the transparent mask, Elliott can just about make out the uneasy fracture of their frown.

Elliott gets a hunch and follows it before the thought even finishes forming. As you do.

“We’re safe,” he says and lowers himself back into the pillows, leaving the high ground to Bloodhound. “We’re at my place, above the bar, and it’s, uh,” he turns his head to the side and reaches for his phone, cringing at the sudden burst of blue light, “almost half past three, and - yeah. We’re here. In bed. Not - wherever it is you went off to.”

Bloodhound ducks their head with that cagey look they sometimes get when Elliott intuits a bit too well, and he bites down on the unbidden jolt of amusement. They think they’re so sneaky and impeme-- inpe-- impemetra--  _ secretive _ and no one can see through them, but really, it’s simply about knowing to look for it. And wanting to look. And, well, Elliott really does. Want, that is.

And it’s not like it was a hard guess anyway.

The mask moves a little as Bloodhound chews on their lip, but eventually they nod. A small victory.

“You are alright,” they state, the panic from before meticulously locked away. Their voice is raw from coughing, the gravel of it breaking off into a whisper halfway through. Their form is carefully still - they’re probably listening for clues.

“Sure am.” Elliott does a fullbody wiggle, and they turn their head to follow the sounds of fabric. “Do you wanna lie back down? I’ll hold you,” he offers, already opening his arms, but Bloodhound shakes their head and quickly wipes their eyes.

“No. Too horizontal.” They shiver and wrap their free arm around their waist, shirt bunching up in the grip.

Damn, right. Not his best idea.  _ Focus, Mirage. _

“Then we’ll do it like this.” Elliott sits up briefly to pile all their pillows together and leans back against the resulting slope. “On your side? Come on. You look like you might keel over any moment.” 

Shit, right, they can’t see - Elliott brushes his hand over the cuff of Bloodhound’s long sleeve, and when they uncurl their fingers in response, brings them to the spot along his side.

Bloodhound follows immediately, leaning forwards to feel out the space with their linked hands. Trusting. “I  _ am _ tired,” they agree, the words crooked by a rueful smile. “Believe me, I did not intend to be awake right now.”

Elliott’s mouth curves easily in response. “You and me, buddy.”

Bloodhound slinks towards him and settles on their right side, pillowing their head on Elliott’s shoulder, and he curls his left arm around their back. Instead of flinching like he’s seen them do when most people get too close, they nestle closer with a contented (though stuttered) sigh, and oh hell, he really doesn’t deserve them at all.

The gas tank, still clenched in Bloodhound’s fist, presses into Elliott’s ribs, and really, it can’t be comfortable for them either. When he reaches for it, palm-up, they only hesitate for a moment before handing it over to him, and Elliott carefully tests the length of the hose and places the tank on his stomach instead. Bloodhound shifts and turns their face away, suddenly restless, as if Elliott would judge them or something. They get like that sometimes - coiled and tense and ready to go, like they are waiting to be told to leave, waiting for the moment where it finally becomes too much. Where Elliott will finally have had enough.

Which is very silly. As if Hound is the one who has to be worried about being left behind. Not that - not that Hound is the kind of person to leave someone behind first - he’s seen, after all, the lengths they go to for their squadmates in the arena, has experienced it firsthand too - it’s more that Elliott is just...Elliott. If anyone needs to be concerned, it’s him.

Careful not to dislodge them or the tank, Elliott stretches until he can reach the blankets and tug them back over them both. Solace is warm, and even with the air conditioning on Elliott is a bit too hot more often than not, but Bloodhound seems to seek out the heat, basking in it like a cat in a spot of sunlight. Their breaths are still wheezing; a straggler cough tears its way out of them, its echoes rattling around in their chest so hard that even Elliott feels it vibrate in his ribs, and they press even closer, plastering themself firmly against Elliott’s side.

Elliott runs hot, too - a true child of Solace - which is half the reason he usually ends up without any blankets come morning (the other half being a certain someone stealing them all in an inspired endeavour to live as a human burrito, as he has discovered), and Bloodhound has mentioned before that the extra warmth soothes the ache. Elliott doesn’t know how well he can actually perform as a living furnace, but if it gets them to melt into him like this, he definitely isn’t going to complain.

He knows that their lungs are scarred - it’s hard  _ not _ to know, with the mask and everything. Hound has once, after considering their words for a very long time, compared the coughing to titanium files rasping over the jagged, hardened tissue. Elliott thought of headaches like electric sparks and the zapping feeling of hard light breaking against itself, and, well - maybe he understands.

Bloodhound moves around again, fidgety, and when Elliott cranes his neck to look at them, their frown is uncomfortable. Still, he hesitates to ask, aware how much they usually appreciate the quiet.

Their body is a stiff, hard line along his.

“Talk to me,” they ask. “Please.”

...Guess even Bloodhound needs the silence filled sometimes. Elliott has nothing substantial to say, not really, not at half past three in the damn morning, but it doesn’t look like Hound is looking for substance anyway. And so Elliott does what he does best: opens his big mouth and rambles away. 

He goes over his orders for next week once again since they are already on his mind, which somehow brings him to recounting that one time when a patron insisted that his karaoke machine was possessed (“Turned out that it was Natalie messing with the frequencies, and honestly? I was laughing too hard to tell the kid to stop.”), which in turn makes him remember that someone managed to steal a record from the jukebox (“Seriously, who would go through all this trouble for _The Sex Bob-ombs,_ of all things? They’re like six hundred years old by now. Or seven hundred? You get my point. Why did I even have them...?”), and from there he circles right back to the orders again - an inexhaustible topic for someone running a bar.

“I also talked with Javi - I don’t know if you remember him?” Elliott pauses for a second, and Bloodhound makes a considering noise. He moves his hand along their shoulders, relieved when they do not feel rock-hard with tension anymore. “He’s the one who hooked me up with the new pickle people, as I’ve been told that my pickles, and I quote, ‘are lacking’.”

“They are soft,” Bloodhound grumbles immediately. “They are not supposed to be soft. There needs to be a crunch.”

“You’re the expert,” Elliott agrees easily.

“And spices.”

“And spices,” he grins at the ceiling, rubbing soothing circles into Bloodhound’s back. 

They rumble in response and release a deep, carefully measured sigh, then turn their head as if trying to nuzzle into Elliott’s shoulder but huff when the mask gets in the way.

Suddenly and violently overwhelmed and seeing zero reasons to fight it, Elliott dips his head for a moment to press a kiss into their frizzy hair.

“Maybe I should make my own pickles,” he muses. “Have my own supply and all that. Fifty different kinds, put  _ Pint and Pickle _ to shame - wait, what else can be pickled apart from, like, pickles? Can you pickle regular cucumbers?”

“Elliott,” Bloodhound snorts in disbelief. “Pickles  _ are _ cucumbers.”

...That. Makes sense.

“Forget I said anything.” He lifts his free hand and waves it around just to have something for his eyes to follow as his mind works. “Actually, I should ask my mom. She has a  _ huge _ recipe book - very fond of writing stuff down - I’m sure there’ll be something on pickling too. Some old family thing. That would be a good place to start.”

Elliott can check on the weekend. Because that’s actually the reason they’re here now, as well as the reason he’s closed his bar for several days - well, no, the pickles are not the reason, obviously, but this is Bloodhound’s first time staying at his place, and he’s getting them to meet his mom, which is  _ not a big deal, _ no matter what Renee says, except that it also  _ is _ because this is his  _ mom  _ and this is  _ Bloodhound, _ and - it’s all going almost mind-blowingly well so far, knock on all the wood in the world. Elliott can’t say if he fits in their life (it seems that way, true, but how would he know for sure?), but after a week of them visiting Bloodhound fits in his with embarrassingly seamless ease. Like they are meant to be here, in a tiny apartment in Solace City, in bed with him. At least for a time.

Distracted by his valiant attempts not to get misty-eyed all of a sudden, Elliott almost misses the moment Bloodhound’s back stiffens again under his arm.

He retraces his last words, checking if anything would jump out at him and clue him in, but nothing really does. Unless…

Elliott settles his hand on Hound’s waist and pulls them just a tad closer, his arm a secure brace along their spine. “Wanna tell me what you dreamed about?”

For a while, there is only the hissing of the exit valve on their mask as they measure out their breaths. A soft sound of lips parting, their jaw moving against Elliott’s shoulder as they prepare to speak. He doesn’t turn his head to check on them again, too afraid to spook.

“There was...snow,” Bloodhound says finally.

Elliott squints at the ceiling when nothing else comes forth. “Do you mean like...an avalanche? A botched trip to a ski resort? I’ve always wanted to try snowboarding.”

Bloodhound huffs. Elliott waits to see if they do anything else - their huffs cover a  _ wide _ range, hard to narrow down on their own without also seeing them - and there it is, the short motion as they rub the side of their face against his tank top. Privately amused, then, though Elliott has no clue at what - that was hardly his best joke.

“No,” they say. “Not an avalanche. A blizzard. It was - a memory.”

Oh shit. One of those, huh. A chill ripples along Elliott’s spine even in the warmth of the night. 

(“We’ll be back before you know it, short stuff.”

“Hey now!”

“Yeah Roger, leave Sibling Number Four alone, he’s already making the puppy face.”

“I’m just saying, Ellie, if I come back and find out you moved into my room, I’ll kill you myself.”)

(He moved into the room, because it was bigger and had more light and didn’t smell like socks, and it really didn’t matter at the time. And then it didn’t matter again.)

Elliott swallows, blinks the shadows out of his eyes. “Look, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.”

Hound so rarely volunteers information about their life, content to stay quiet for hours and hours if left unprodden, perfectly at peace in their own little world, that Elliott is ravenous for  _ anything _ they are willing to give, but if this time the hooks sit so deep that it’ll tear them to shreds if they try pulling them out, Elliott really, really can do without. It’s not worth it. It’s never worth it.

Bloodhound stills in consideration, but then seems to come to a decision and slowly shakes their head, hair tickling under Elliott’s chin. “It was about the day of the disaster that - decimated the plant and the town that had risen around it,” they say, words dislodging themselves with difficulty from their throat. “It was also, coincidentally, my day of birth.”

They pause for breath every mouthful of words, the exit valve whispering from the pressure, but something tells Elliott that it is not the only reason for the slow pace.

“I remember that because before we all sat down together and they - explained to me how Talos's calendar translated to - to Common, so I would know when my birthday was when they eventually - finished their work and we would all move back to where we used to live.” Their chest bleeds deeper into Elliott’s side with every breath as their ribs expand, the filtered air puffing over his collarbone, warm. They are still not breathing with their stomach, despite chastising Elliott many times for the exact same thing. “I was turning four.”

They stop again, their weight sagging onto Elliott; but even laboured like this, their speech has the cadence of a - a poem or something. A hymn, maybe, a call Elliott can’t not heed. It’s entrancing.

Four years old, they said - Elliott bullies the circuits in his brain into firing faster and quickly does the math, converting the calendars - that means he was nearing one.

“My parents took several days off work,” Bloodhound continues after their breathing evens out somewhat. “We were supposed to visit the family of my uncle and celebrate with them. But then my mother - she got called in on short notice. I--” An aborted motion here, an attempt to curl up, but Elliott is in the way, and they mold themselves tighter against him. “I do not know, for what reason.”

Something shifts in Elliott at the words, a pinching sort of foreboding. He carefully places his free hand on his chest, fingers pulling on his tank until he feels the resistance of the fabric where it’s trapped between them, and releases a breath he didn’t notice holding when Bloodhound reaches back for him, their skin calloused and criss-crossed with trenches of scars and still disarmingly soft in between.

“There was an earthquake before the explosion,” they continue. Their voice is quiet, an ancient echo of the disaster filtered through the press of time. They’ve said so much already, all in one go - it must be taking its toll. “My guess is that the epicenter of it was on the underground levels. My father took the other snowglider to try to bring her home, but the--” a cough interrupts them, their fingers clenching around Elliott’s like a safety rope as it batters its way through their body, “the, uh, the station exploded before he could - get far. The snowglider broke down, and he ran back, but the - the Freeze was faster.”

Elliott runs his thumb over their knuckles, counting the uneven dips where skin has been replaced with scar tissue. They briefly squeeze his hand, shift their head and let out a wordless grumble before settling again. They feel heavier where their head is resting on Elliott’s shoulder, where their hand lies in his. Elliott wonders if they can feel it too.

The sigh that escapes Bloodhound is weary, older than what could possibly belong to someone who is only thirty-four, held in for too long. “I saw it happen. I ran out to him, but it was…it was a mistake. I could do nothing. I do not remember what came next, but my uncle told me later that he found me on the floor of our home, half-lost to life. That is why I’m - my eyes.”

Something wells in Elliott, a powerful and protective feeling, his body straining to curve against Bloodhound in turn, to keep them closer, safer, warmer, to reach deep enough that he’d somehow undo all of it at least for a minute.

But he can’t, nobody can, and so he settles on moving his left hand up to cup the back of their head, their bound hair softly prickling his skin. Bloodhound shifts their own hand in response, untangling it from Elliott’s and reaching up to press a light touch into his neck. Their fingers aren’t cold anymore, and he feels his pulse thud under them, birthed into awareness by their point of connection.

Elliott tilts his head to look at Bloodhound, takes in their solemn expression. They blink slowly, the light from the window reflecting in their eyes like ice melt, slits of it sectioning their scars into formations. 

Elliott wonders how much they can actually see like this, without their glasses or goggles. How much of the blizzard got trapped in there, trapping them in turn.

They are breathtakingly handsome, with or without the scars. It’s not the point, of course - and also not for Elliott to judge - but it’s something he can’t help noticing. Like a marble statue, brought into beauty alongside all the hardships that have shaped its creation.

Elliott pauses. He’s even thinking all weird now -  _ that’s _ how Bloodhound makes them feel.

“I’m sorry, Houndie,” he murmurs. His fingers sink into the hair until he can massage their scalp, prompting them to sigh and turn their head into the caress. “Sounds like the worst dream material.”

They move to nod but seem to reconsider and push back into Elliott’s hand instead. “The recollection of what happened to my father is - what my dream was about. And when I managed to wake myself up, I… The cold lingered, and you were there but you were so still, and it was - difficult to understand what was real. I was disoriented. And troubled.” They lay their head back down, Elliott’s hand slipping to their bared, vulnerable nape, cords of tendons and muscles and the underwater shadows of vertebrae under the soft skin. “I am sorry.”

“Hey, no.” The gesture is making Elliott uneasy, and he runs his hand back down to their waist, the shirt like disturbed waters over the hints of their scars. “None of that, now. I’m glad you woke me up, actually. I wouldn’t want you to be alone.”

Bloodhound has witnessed an awful lot of deaths, now that he thinks of it. Their father, and that Boone guy, and - they haven’t told him exactly what has happened to their uncle - and haven’t even mentioned his family before - but he’s put enough pieces together to guess that it was something in the same vein. Well, uh, they  _ all _ have witnessed, technically, that is - still do, most weekends, and will continue into the undetermined future, but this is not the same. The doom of permanence is a heavy burden, and Elliott can only guess how much worse it must feel to actually  _ see _ someone you care about cross the line into it.

As much as he can - which is more than most people can, lucky enough to never have had to learn - Elliott understands. Though he wasn’t there when it happened, he’s imagined himself onboard that ship often enough. He doesn’t hate many things in life - too strong of a word to just throw it around - but he absolutely hates the bone-gnawing feeling of being alone after dreams like that.

For once, Elliott has nothing to say. What worth are words against a colossus like this? What would ever be of any use at all?

Bloodhound falls silent too, absently tracing a shape into Elliott’s tank top, just above the metallic gas cylinder, and it takes him a moment to recognize the outline he’s traced with his own fingers and eyes countless times before - a scarred trophy from their first win together.

(“Oh  _ fuck me,” _ Elliott wheezes out and immediately regrets it as Caustic’s gas - some new unholy concoction, paralyzing maybe? - floods his lungs deeper, eager to replace the released air. 

He can’t see anything through the smoke, and his limbs are growing unwieldy and sluggish and his mind is slowing down, and really, it’s a damn miracle he’s managed to land a solid hit on Octavio in all the commotion.

The problem is that Octavio traded him a hit of his own. The butterfly knife was sharp and as clean as it could possibly be in the arena, but the stab was vicious and deep, and Elliott can already feel the blood soaking his torn suit even as his skin is slowly growing numb.

A wave of red pulses over him, and Elliott thinks he must be kicking the bucket (wondering with an absent sort of curiosity what’s going to win the cause of death race: suffocation or blood loss), but then a voice comes over the comm crackle.

_ “I see you, Mirage. Coming in for retrieval.” _

Bloodhound. Elliott is hearing them double - is it even possible? - but that mystery is quickly solved when they appear out of smoke like a fog-dwelling creature and crouch by him, fierce and intense, not a movement out of place. Elliott would be mesmerized if he weren’t actively dying.

Bloodhound’s breathing is heavy, with a strange rasping sound at the end of every inhale that he can hear even over the gunfire, but they look okay - they don’t seem slowed down - the mask must be protecting them from the worst of it.

“We need to go. Can you stand?” 

Gloved hands run over him, press over the wound, and Elliott cries out at the sun-bright flare of agony before he can wrangle his slack mouth into responding.

Bloodhound hisses a swear, and fuck, he’s  _ sorry, _ he didn’t  _ mean _ to get jumped, and then they yank Elliott to his feet, all but carrying him when said feet immediately give out.

“Bangalore,” Bloodhound gasps. “I got Mirage. Status.”

_ “Ready to cover,” _ Anita’s voice is tensed like a muscle - she’s in the zone, fully in her element.  _ “Western exit is clear, poppin’ smoke now. Go!” _

What comes next is pain, a desperate grip on his slipping consciousness, and more pain, Bloodhound’s arm a vice around his ribs as they drag him out and away from the building and into the woods, and then Anita comes up on his other side, and it’s somehow both easier and harder to move, and maybe they should just leave him - or maybe he can do something useful for once and let go and decide for them before they walk into another ambush. There are no respawn stations left in the arena, but that’s okay. These two are a powerhouse, they don’t need him with them.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I’m empty on meds,” Anita says, and she sounds much farther away than she was just now - huh, and Elliott is not vertical anymore - they must have dropped him down. Have they decided to cut their losses? Good. “I’ll check his - oh.”

Elliott stares up at the sky, tinged orange with impending sunset, the titans of clouds rolling across it so, so slowly. Now that he thinks of it - lying on top of a full backpack wouldn’t be nearly as comfortable. Either his back is fully numb and there’s only a little bit of time left before it shackles his lungs too, or - or he’s lost the damn thing in the scuffle.

Elliott would squeeze his eyes shut if he could, useless shame washing over him, prominent even through the pain.

“I have them.” Bloodhound’s voice is clipped almost to nothing. They rummage in their own backpack, retrieving a bunch of syringes, and move towards Elliott but seem to change their mind and hold out the supplies to Anita instead. Their hands are shaking when she takes them.)

(Back then, Elliott wrote it off as the combination of a close brush, the lingering effects of the gas, and maybe their anger at him for getting jumped like that and endangering the entire squad, but - who knows.

Maybe he’ll ask them about it at some point. Not right now, though.)

Bloodhound’s touch is a line of warmth around the scar, retraced again and again and again. Elliott is reminded of those singing bowls made of brass, or the huge maze-like drawings in the fields that can only be understood once you’ve walked them. Something that makes sense only after being felt. 

“I only wish I knew why she had to go,” they say, their tired voice a low hum resonating in Elliott’s chest. “I went to investigate the station on my own, many times over the course of my life, but all the locks are either - frozen shut or can only be opened with a personal keycard.” They frown. “My mother had one on her, but her body was - never recovered. And my father’s did not have the clearance for her section. There is nothing I can do.”

Elliott says nothing, but Bloodhound doesn’t seem to be looking for it anyway, and they both drift off deeper into melancholic silence. Bloodhound stills their movements and flattens the palm of their hand against the scar, and their fingers are touching Elliott’s again. A canyon stretches in front of Elliot’s eyes, smoke rising from its churning depths into the sky that is still somehow sunlit and blazing blue.

Bloodhound is quiet for so long that Elliott begins to suspect that they’ve dozed off. It’s not very safe for them to sleep with the mask on, but maybe it’s alright if he’s there to watch over them.

His arm is falling asleep though. Elliott is scowling at the ceiling and trying to think up a plan on how to fix that without waking Bloodhound up, when their heartbeat quickens, knocking into his ribs. Another nightmare?

Elliott is getting ready to rouse Hound if it turns bad again, but then they begin to speak.

“Do you think we could…” they cut themself abruptly off, shaking their head in a short motion that almost feels like punishment. “No, forget it.”

“What’s up?” Elliott asks immediately. 

He wouldn’t push, normally. If Hound doesn’t want to talk, he doesn’t press them, even though words that they have no intention to speak never even gain enough shape to be released in the first place - but their heart is thudding so hard it feels like it’s beating in his own chest.

The silence has time to stretch again, like fog over water, before they start once more.

“I wondered if...if your mother would be inclined to talk to me about this,” they murmur, and something cold and miserable twists in Elliott’s gut, right beneath the scar, deeper than the warmth of Hound’s hand can reach. “If she might know - but that is not why we are visiting her.” They shake their head again, resolute. “I would be a poor guest to make her recount such memories.”

Even thinking about it wakes a desperate sort of urgency in Elliott, because - because she could’ve been there too, on that day. She could’ve been put on the same shift as Bloodhound’s mother, as they often would while working on joint projects, according to her, and it’s only dumb luck, really, that she wasn’t. She could’ve been there, and she could’ve-- and Elliott shakes the thought off, deeply paranoid. Though there is no way to attract it into being now, thirty years later, it still feels as though the disaster could reach through time and pluck her right out, like a different kind of snowdrift has been steadily stealing her from him.

His mom has mentioned Bloodhound’s several times already (mostly on the tail of Bloodhound themself doing something extraordinary in the arena, which happens often enough), but despite his never-ending hunger for any crumbs of information about their life, Elliott has never pushed her to talk more, feeling strangely guilty and sullen at the idea. He prompts her to talk about everything else, at least - they’ve been told that it could be helpful - but the guilt does not leave.

Is now the time? Is he getting his two favourite people to meet just so that they can ache together? Should they wake this ghost, of a mother, a friend?

But for Bloodhound - for Bloodhound, the same person who’s spent  _ years _ dedicating their entire self to the memory of a man they once knew - the ghosts have never rested in the first place.

If his mom could help them find closure the way she and Elliott can’t find their own...

It gets bad, sometimes. Most of the time, it’s okay, she’s okay, and it’s like nothing was ever wrong, but there are these - gaps she falls through, and Elliott can only watch, helpless, and call out to her until she finds her way back. She waves it off when he’s around, unfailingly supportive and assuring when it should be the other way around, when it’s  _ him _ who should be doing the supporting and the assuring and-- but out of range of Elliott’s nervous attention, her composure slips. 

Lucina, a woman Elliott has hired a few years ago to keep an eye on his mother when he’s away competing, has mentioned several times, hands pressed worriedly together, how upset and frustrated she can get once another gap tries to take her for its own. Or once she climbs out of it and realizes what’s happened. Still, she doesn’t talk to Elliott about this and brushes it off with a thin-lipped joke if he tries to bring it up. 

He recognizes the mask - his own is a well-worn legacy. You always learn these things from someone else. Never on your own.

It’s slowly getting worse and doesn’t care if it’s talked about or not, like nightfall doesn’t care if the lights are on. Therapy helps somewhat, and she’s taking meds for palla-- pallai-- symptomatic stuff, but there is not much more they can do until the start of the treatment program.

...The program that Hound has ensured her participation in.

The wave surges in Elliott again, gratitude and hope and deep, unbelievable sadness. But there is nowhere for it to go, nothing he can do except hold Bloodhound closer and pray that it can be worth something.

“Let’s see how it goes, okay?” He says, and his dumb heart falls when Bloodhound goes slack against him, the fight leaving them with the tension. “No, bud, this isn’t a ‘no’, just...we should play this by ear. If she’s...if it all works out, if she’s up for it, I’m sure she’d love to talk to you, but we just need to see first. Sounds good to you?”

After mulling it over, Bloodhound gives him a slow nod.

“Thank you.”

They don’t ask him what’s wrong - haven’t alluded to it at all, in fact, despite what they’ve done for her. Giving Elliott all the space he could possibly need, and honestly, he owes them to at least try to close the distance.

“No thanks needed, Houndie.” Elliott moves to kiss the top of their head again but almost inhales a mouthful of hair instead when he gets blindsided by a jaw-cracking yawn. He feels more than hears Hound’s answering one and smiles. “Wanna try to go back to sleep?”

“No,” Bloodhound replies. “I will stay awake for a short while still.”

Probably still too precarious from the bad dream. Elliott knows the feeling. “You sure? Want me to hang around with you until you are ready?”

Bloodhound tilts their head back, leaning it against Elliott’s arm, until they can squint up at him, dark eyes studying his. “No, dear, thank you. Though you should rest.” They indicate the mask, the hose, the gas tank with a nod. “I cannot leave this off yet. Although…”

They move closer again, and before Elliott can begin to guess whatever it is they mean, there is a soft sound of the mask unsealing, and fingers run along his collarbones and neck and further up before lips follow the mapped out trail. They graze the stubble on his neck, glance over his beard, and then Bloodhound uses their hand to hold themself up and lean over him, abandoning the pretence of needing a guide.

Elliott welcomes them gladly, parting his lips at the first press of theirs, one hand cupping their cheek, the other coming up to rest on their hip - and it still makes him feel like he’s touching something forbidden, something he should not even know about, let alone be allowed to caress, and so he closes his eyes and gives himself over to the firm, gentle press and the warm weight of them, solid and soft and melting their scars into his. For a moment, everything else ceases to exist, and for a moment, Elliott doesn’t care one bit.

With a parting nip on his lower lip, Bloodhound leans back and away from him, and Elliott, mindless with affection bursting from his heart, tries to follow the lingering warmth and raises his head, but a hand on his chest carefully halts his movement while another-- steals a pillow, apparently.

Elliott opens his eyes, and there they sit, holding said pillow to their chest. They laugh at his dazed silence, mischievous despite how sleepy they must be.

He blinks up at Hound. “Treachery - I thought you just wanted a kiss.”

“I did,” they agree. “But it would do you no good to fall asleep like that. I am no expert in Common, but I believe the word you were looking for is ‘favour’.”

“Smartass.” Elliott grins and catches their free hand, pressing a kiss to the knuckles. It twitches in his hold - they are always so easily flustered with stuff like this. It’s adorable.

Bloodhound smiles at him, sun-bright even in the dead of night, and he briefly laments the loss when they fit the mask back on. They lie down again and burrow into the blankets, still nestled close though not leaning on Elliott anymore. His arm tingles in appreciation.

“Goodnight, Houndie,” he says, not even trying to hide the fondness in his voice.

“Goodnight, Elliott," they respond, and maybe a day will come when he stops noticing the way they pronounce his name, the hard and prominent consonants at the end almost a syllable of their own,  _ Elliot-teh, _ but it's not this day. Night. Whatever.

As he drifts off, Elliott hopes he will have the time to grow used to it. But he also hopes he never truly does.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :) find me clowning on [twitter](https://twitter.com/royalcorvids).


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